


the world turns

by at_a_loss



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 19:31:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5387657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/at_a_loss/pseuds/at_a_loss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurapika was okay, but that was a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> well, here you are, and here am i. let us together delve further into ruin.

There is a place to start, and there is a place to settle.

When Kurapika started, he was laughing. Two steps to the right, a slight stumble, a lick of wind that displaces a single lock of hair. The smell of grass as his toes break open shoots of short, ticklish grass that stain his heels for the next two or so hours. Two eyes shining and angled due to the force his cheeks exert upwards to make way for his chiming laughter, embellished by delicate pants. The weight of wood, unfamiliar to his unpracticed hands, doubles on him as it connects with its target opposite.

This is what Kurapika remembers when he thinks about where he started, he thinks about his cousin across from him as they play. His wooden swords were a reflection of his beginning as a fighter, but things were different later. It was time for a new start, for nen, and wooden swords would make way for something else.

It happened without thought, without hesitation. In fact, Kurapika doesn't really know how it happened. But when the word slipped out of his mouth, it fit. Nothingness became surety, certainty. It was only natural that he should meet his fate in the gear it once outfitted him in. And so Kurapika became the chain fighter.

Yes, it was time to settle. Worlds turned, discoveries were discovered, calls went ignored, but then Kurapika was finished.

He could never avenge his people, not without becoming something he wasn't. But Kurapika didn't care, what seemed like an age ago. He had killed and he had collected, but all he had to show for it was an all-consuming sense of emptiness. No, it wasn't a sense, it was a lack of sense, if anything. Nothing could chisel the motionless expression of unconcern from his face.

A text. Blonde eyebrows furrow imperceptibly, with what feels like great effort. **Unknown:** _Another pair found, in need of recovery. You know the drill._ No, Kurapika decides he doesn't care. His phone finds itself upside down on the bedroom floor of the hotel, but Kurapika doesn't know that until he comes back from the kitchenette an hour later, and almost steps on it in his intoxication.

Kurapika perches on the bed and braces himself over his thighs. His suit will be wrinkled tomorrow. Kurapika dully notes that even under the influence, his thoughts are bland distractions. Almost in reply, the insignificant thought tucks itself into the insurmountable expanse of gray and nothing and cotton that strangles his mind.

If it weren't the case, maybe Kurapika would wonder how a void could be so suffocating. But Kurapika wasn't wondering anything, really.

Face immobile throughout the dark hours, Kurapika fell into an unconsciousness that was a far cry from satisfactory.

The phone on the floor was left to buzz incessantly. Despite dying an hour later, Kurapika's phone remained in its current position for two days. On the bed three feet away, its owner came very close to doing the same.

Sprawled and stoic, Kurapika did not make note of nor care for this fact.


	2. Chapter 2

When Leorio had begun, he hadn't imagined it was the start of anything. Well, maybe he could call it the start of something boring.

"So, boy, what grade are you in?" a lady who looked like she'd had this conversation too many times asked him, a very long time ago. Leorio didn't remember where. It wasn't important.

"I'm in kindergarten!" he told her.

The lady smiled automatically upon the response. "Is that so? I bet you learn all kinds of fun stuff in kindergarten!" she asserted. The lady wasn't expecting the response that came, but no one ever really did, from a kindergarten student.

"I don't learn anything. I already learned how to color, but coloring is all we do! School is boring," Leorio said to the lady before walking away. As a little kid, Leorio assumed that learning wasn't worth his time. What he didn't realize was that that conclusion was reached through the desire to learn upon his own discretion. So he followed his current logic and tried to ignore school.

But things didn't quite work out the way Leorio wanted them to. The disconnection from school extended to his peers, so Leorio never quite learned to master his temper. He and the principle became fast friends.

"Leorio, you know why you're here, and I know what you're going to say. So instead, I would like to tell you what I think," the principle began.

Leorio crossed his arms and slouched in his seat, but he directed his attentiveness to the principle nonetheless.

"Your teacher tells me that you are a very peculiar boy. Three days will go bye without a word nor a glance from you, and the next your top explodes and you're yelling like a murder victim--please don't tell your mother I said that. Anyways, despite the complete lack of attention you seem to direct to class, you consistently receive exemplary grades on tests. If you did your homework, I have no doubt that you could become the top student of your class. The funny part is, you don't know the knowledge beforehand, as the pre-grade tests indicate annually. So how do you suddenly get these marks? You have the brain of a genius, but the mindset of a fool. Not at all what I expect of a third grader."

Leorio huffed and slouched further in the lightly upholstered chair across from the principle's desk. His glasses slipped further down his nose. Leorio didn't know why he got those grades. He never did any homework. But he couldn't help himself when there was nothing to do but listen to the teacher.

One day, Leorio got moved to replace the girl who wouldn't stop whispering excitedly to the friend sitting next to her. He passed the sniveling girl to put his backpack under his new chair. At last sitting down, Leorio muttered under his breath in irritation, crossed his calves, and bowed his head to reach for a pencil from his backpack.

When Leorio raised his head, he made direct eye-contact with the boy next to him and froze. Leorio coughed awkwardly and continued moving. But the boy was still looking at him.

Leorio tried to ignore him and fixed his eyes on the teacher.

"...igneous rocks were created from..."

Leorio shifted uncomfortably.

"...lithification in sedimentary rocks..."

Leorio gulped.

"...minerals are different from..."

"WILL YOU MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!?" Leorio finally shouted at the boy, chair having been roughly shoved aside when he stood up and placed his forearms on the desk.

"Leorio! Sit down! What do you think you're doing?" the teacher hissed angrily.

"Sorry," the boy started, looking resolutely at Leorio, cheeks darkening, "I was just, um, looking at your glasses. They're, uh, nice," he finished with a small quirk of the lips.

"Tch," Leorio replied and sat down, unable to think about what to say but feeling suitably contrite.

"Now that you're sitting down, Leorio, can I continue?" the teacher asked with a sense of saintliness.

Leorio acquiesced, and so the next three hours passed same as any other three hours of Leorio's sixth grade.

But then as Leorio grabbed his trumpet case, adjusted his glasses, and put his backpack on, the boy from before made his way over.

"What do you want?" Leorio had asked. No one could say he was the most sociable of pre-teens.

"Relax, will ya? Can't anyone get a decent word in around these parts?" the boy began. "I'm Pietro. Pleased to meet 'cha."

"Well, _Pietro,_ don't you know that shaking hands is the number one way to spread germs? I don't know where you've been," Leorio said, almost proud of himself for what he thought was a clever retort.

"Ouch, man. Fine then, I've got some hand sanitizer-"

"Don't bother," Leorio started, "I've got to go." He turned around.

"Wait!" a hand grabbed at his jacket, prompting Leorio to turn around. "I'm new here, I don't know anyone. I'm not a bad person, I swear! I'll even wash my hands. I just wanna have someone to talk to," Pietro said pitifully.

Leorio was genuinely curious. "Why me? No one talks to me."

"Because the cooler the glasses, the cooler the person. That's my philosophy, at least. And your glasses do this weird arc-y thing. It's neat."

"HOW CAN THAT BE YOUR REASON!? DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!?" Leorio was blustering. The nerve of this kid! He had completely forgotten all the pathetic things the boy said beforehand.

"Yeah, actually I do," Pietro murmured to himself, too quietly for Leorio to hear, but visibly enough for him to see.

"What was that?" Leorio said, getting more and more annoyed by this boy by the second. Too late, he realized what it was that the boy must have said. "Wait, I-"

"It's nothing. Sorry to bother you. Bye, Leorio," the boy offered before turning. 

"Pietro." He turned back around. "Come over to my place?"

Leorio didn't know Pietro. He didn't even really like Pietro. But if what he heard was right, he couldn't just let the boy leave. Leorio felt kind of guilty now, actually.

Pietro beamed. "Sure! Thanks, Leorio! We're going to be great friends, I know it!"

Early in eighth grade, Leorio's best friend, Pietro, finally told him what his problem was.

A few months later, Leorio's boyfriend, Pietro, was dead.

It was with this thought in the back of his mind that Leorio insistently pressed "call again." It wasn't fair, why did he have to lose them all? Why did the smartest people he'd ever known make the most thoughtless mistakes? Ear to phone, hand to head, polished shoes crossed, Leorio called the other one who had left him, and all the while, fragments of hope were burying themselves deeper, drawing blood. But there the recording was again.

"Hello. This is the phone of Kurapika. I apologize for being unavailable at he moment. Please leave a message. _beep_ "

"GODDAMNIT, KURAPIKA, ANSWER YOUR PHONE! I'M NOT PLAYING A GAME HERE! I'M A BUSY MAN! TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE! I don't know where you are. Kurapika, please don't be dead, you idiot. You can't be dead, right? Please Kurapika, I miss you... shit. Never mind, pretend I didn't say that. Oh! This is Leorio, in case you didn't know that already. Call me please!" Leorio ended the message and tossed his phone on the bed before flopping down next to it.

"Kurapika..." he muttered into the pillow before squeezing it tightly. His glasses were pressed against his eyelid, and Leorio could see the little drop roll down the lens. "You can't die on me too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wish i could write something more original, but bear with me. im learning. tu for reading so far <3 <3


End file.
